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When to Start Queens

Can anyone give me some advice about when I should start raising queens? I want to make some early splits (March) and I want to make sure that I can have some queens ready. My questions is, at what time will bees start raising drones so that my queens will be able to mate? Can I force them to start now by placing drone frames in the brood box or do I need to create the perfect situation in the hive to make this happen.

I assume you're at the coast
around here I had swarming last year in mid march
if you don't do something in march, (split/manipulate the brood nest) a strong hive is going to "run away from home"
watch the weather and split as soon as you see the end of bad cold (sustained below freezing)
check em when you get a warm spell and look for swarm cells
if you find em you gotta split
disclaimer: this advice is for march forward, it doesn't apply to warm spells in january

Abstract:
The relationships between produced drone honey bee brood and certain meteorological factors (mean daily temperature, mean daily relative humidity, sunshine hours and wind velocity), honey bee colony activities during natural growth period, and the effect of the four meteorological factors on drone flight activity and their relation to pre-oviposition period of queens during natural mating periods were studied from 1 January to 31 May 2003 in Egypt. The drone honey bee brood area was maximum on 7 March, and minimum at the end of May. Positive correlations were found between produced drone honey bee brood and both bee population and produced worker brood. Correlations were negative between drone honey bee brood and each of stored pollen, uncapped honey and capped honey. Drone honey bee brood area was negatively correlated with daily temperature, but positively correlated with daily relative humidity. All above-mentioned factors affected drone honey bee brood production by 85%. Significant differences in drone flight activity were found among most day-hours. The number of flight drones during the whole natural mating period was maximum at 14.00 h, and minimum at 11.00 h. Drone honey bee flight activity was positively correlated with both daily relative humidity and sunshine hours, but was negatively correlated with both daily temperature and wind velocity. These factors affected drone honey bee flight activity by 31.5%. Pre-oviposition period was shortest on 1 April, and longest on 1 May, indicating that April can be considered the best time for queen mating.

Publisher: Faculty of Agriculture, Assiut University

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tecumseh replies:
most of the very earliest drones (and I suspect drones maintained in a hive all winter fits this same billing) are from failing hives. for myself these are not the kind of drones I desire to help generate the next generation of queens.

I'm not sure I understand Tecumseh. Do you mean the queen is getting old and infertile? Of course it's hard to know which hive they are from as they come and go at will. I had big drones into fall, but they were kicked out and what i have been seeing all winter are smaller size drones. What do you mean by failing hive?

failing hive 'may' be the result of any number of problems. it is quite common as you go thru hives in the early spring to find a certain small number of formerly robust hive where the old queen just did not make the transition to begin laying again in the spring after some time period in which laying has totally ceased.

one advantage I see in feeding pollen patties is that it really kicks off brood rearing in a large enough way and thereby failed queens become quite obvious (obvious from the quantity of popped drone brood and also the unsettled personality of the hive). actually I usually recognize the unsettle character first and then when I push the girls back from the top bar with a good quantity of smoke the popping become evident without ever pulling a single frame.

with the girls you do come to expect to see certain thing in certain season and (I guess I have learned this over some time) when you see things that are seasonally unusual it is often a good time to poke around and find out what's up... even a small number of overwintered drones suggest to me that something in the hive is amiss and the queen is the likely problem.

I agree with Tecumseh on this. Anytime you see drones in a hive where other hives have kicked them out already suggest a problem with the queen. If time permits, and you can get another queen, it is best to remieded the problem when first noticed. If you can't get another queen then pinch the queen and combine with another hive.

Can anyone give me some advice about when I should start raising queens? I want to make some early splits (March) and I want to make sure that I can have some queens ready.

Two weeks before you want to use them in your nucs. Right Michael?

I usually start making my splits in SC around the 15th of March. I've used a method of making splits w/ a frame that has some eggs in it, so they can raise their own queen. This year I'm going to get queen cells from a friend of mine, so I can get them earlier and hopefully have stronger colonies before it's time to go north.

I'm not sure how where I have my bees compares to where yours are, so maybe you should ask someone close to you.

>I want to make some early splits (March) and I want to make sure that I can have some queens ready.

If your intent is to give the nucs cells, and if your intent is to graft, then you need to graft 10 days before you intend to put the cells in the nucs. If you intend to confine the queen to know the age of the larvae, then you need to do that four days before that (two weeks before you set up the nucs).

If your intent is to mate them in mini nucs or something then you'd need to allow another two weeks to get a laying queen.